taste. But he did in America quite as much as Sir Charles Wyndham and
Sir Henry Irving in England to elevate the personality, the social and
intellectual standing of the actor and the stage, effecting in a lifetime a
revolution in the attitude of the people and the clergy of both countries
to the theater and all things in it. This was surely enough for one man in
any craft or country.

He was always a good stage speaker. Late in life he began to speak
elsewhere, and finally to lecture. His success pleased him immensely. The
night of the Sunday afternoon charity for the Newsboys' Home in Louisville,
when the promise of a talk from him had filled the house to overflowing,
he was like a boy who had come off from a college occasion with all the
honors. Indeed, the degrees of Harvard and Yale, which had reached him both
unexpectedly and unsolicited, gave him a pleasure quite apart from the
vanity they might have gratified in another; he regarded them, and justly,
as the recognition at once of his profession and of his personal character.

I never knew a man whose moral sensibilities were more acute. He loved the
respectable. He detested the unclean. He was just as attractive off the
stage as upon it, because he was as unaffected and real in his personality
as he was sincere and conscientious in his public representations, his
lovely nature showing through his art in spite of him. His purpose was to
fill the scene and forget himself.



V


The English newspapers accompanied the tidings of Mr. Jefferson's death